Yo. I'm doing this thing now. Do with it what you will. Will I update this regularly? No. I have way too much going on as of the moment, but I will actually try to get chapters for this done. Unlike some other projects.

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Mandatory Disclaimer: Here's some shit I'm saying. Just morph it into some sort of disclaimer. Do it. Do my work for me.

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Sounds of the Heart | Murmur, Part 1.

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To Jirou Kyouka, there were very few things that were better than sitting her butt down on her bed, cranking up the volume on one of the many amps that filled her room, and jamming out to some tunes.

By far, it was the girl's go-to method of relaxing after having to attend classes for the most of her day. It's actually been that way for as long as she's been able to remember. If she had to put the for blame that on anyone, she'd have to give it all to her parents– they were the ones she learned the habit from, after all. There was just something about the act that never failed to put her mind to ease, even after the most stressful situations and, after what happened today, she really needed her mind at ease as it was currently running a mile a minute.

Grabbing a nearby pillow and rolling over on her side, Kyouka pulled it close to her chest and began to mull over all that had happened at school in complete silence, which was honestly a really hard thing to do since it had all occurred so quickly…

If Kyouka had to be honest, she really didn't know a thing about the person that had been chosen by Aizawa-sensei to be her partner for the coming exercise that he had planned and dumped onto all of them, all of a sudden.

Basically, what all of them had to do was get into groups of two's and find a single, hidden person in the allotted time period of 20 minutes. The crux of the exercise being that they had to be partnered with someone who they never really worked with before in the past, as Aizawa believed it to be important that every single one of his students be able to work well with any hero they just so happened to be with at the time during a crisis situation and wanted to really drive the point home.

That point being a rather hard one to argue against – and that wasn't just because Aizawa-sensei was both a professional hero and their teacher, it was, in fact, an all-around good point – no one even moved to complain about it. Not even Bakugou, who complained about most things in general! Kyouka attributed the fact that, in a way, they had already done something like this in the past with the exams. Then, a lot of them ended up being paired with someone that they had very little past experience with, or in some cases, very little chemistry with, and today was the same kind of spiel but significantly easier on the objective side of things.

The class didn't need to get the better of a pro-hero this time. All they had to do was save more than a single person from an area where a 'natural disaster' had taken place in twenty minutes, which sounded like a cakewalk to the sound-quirk user in comparison.

Kyouka didn't even sweat having to work with someone she wasn't very familiar with. While not being the most outgoing person when it came to social things, she wasn't a slouch at making fast acquaintances with people when she needed to. If communication was the key to succeeding, she would more than happily oblige. So, when she got to meet her designated partner and sat down next to him to wait for their turn to come up, they were the third to last group scheduled to go, she was as cool as a cucumber.

The same, however, could not be said about her partner, who, despite having improved his own communication skills tremendously over the school year, was still more than just a little nervous about having to deal with someone he himself wasn't all too familiar with. Though, as she thought that and idly listened to him mutter to himself rapidly, a part of her couldn't help but pick up on a few choice words that made his nervousness make sense.

Midoriya Izuku was just really, really bad with girls in the private setting, though given how high-strung, nervous, and unconfident he used to be at the beginning of the year when dealing with anyone, much less a girl, that didn't surprise Kyouka at all. That, however, didn't mean that she liked his nervousness.

The bob cut-rocking girl needed his head in the game for the exercise and so, she felt rather obligated to say something to her partner to help calm him down, but unfortunately, she had no idea as to what she could say to help him get over the fact that she was born a girl. Like, what could she actually say at this point? To get over it and be a man? That would only cause him to stress out more!

Looks like there's nothing I can do, Kyouka thought to herself while letting out a defeated sigh. I guess the only thing that I can do now is just hope that he manages to get his head twisted back on straight when our turn comes up…

As Kyouka thought that, she noted that she was taking quite a big risk by not addressing the situation when she could've and trusting Midoriya to get his head twisted back on straight on his own, but that was the only thing she could do at this point. It's not like making small talk would help him calm him down any!

Besides, it wasn't like Midoriya was someone who was known for being awful under pressure in the first place, or, at the very least, every time where Kyouka had gotten the opportunity to see him operate, he never seemed that way. Sure, there times where he would obviously get nervous under pressure, but he would always do his best to keep any and all panic out of what he did and that, in itself, attested to how she was probably right to assume that everything was going to be fine with him during their exercise… Probably.

Yeah, there's no way that this is going to end awfully— The noise-based hero in training tried to think that, but her train of thought was cut off by the very partner she was thinking about.

"S-S-So…" Midoriya's voice, to his credit, came off sounding a lot more clear and stable than Kyouka had originally anticipated it to be. "J-Jirou-san…?"

"Ah, you need something, Midoriya?" Kyouka asked back in her usual calm, even tone, even though the suddenness of the talking had caused her to jump a little out of shock. There was no need to make the green-haired boy's already shaky emotions go more off-kilter by saying or doing something that implied he scared her when he was already, very clearly doing his best.

"U-Uh, um… I-I was just wondering if you'd like to, um…" The way Midoriya looked as he forced himself to get all of that out was pretty hard for Kyouka to look at, she had to admit. As he spoke, he would try his best to not lose direct eye contact with the ground and kept his whole body leaned away from her as they sat on the ground, almost as if breathing on her would cause her to shatter. Every part of her wanted to grab him by both his shoulders and tell him that everything was going to be fine and that he had nothing to worry about, but she had the distinct feeling that wasn't going to help him at all. Actually, that would've more than likely caused things to become worse than they already were. "G-go over some strategy before it's our turn?"

The green-haired boy had said that last part incredibly fast, but thanks to her fantastic hearing ability, Kyouka was able to understand what he had been trying to ask her fully. Still, the overall speed that Midoriya had spoken with had thrown her for somewhat of a loop. So much so, that it caused her to default back to her usual sarcastic, teasing ways and blubber out something she almost immediately regretted saying when it came out her mouth, "Go over strategy, huh? Not to sound rude and all, but wouldn't that require you to be able to talk to me without stuttering?"

"A-Ah! Alright then… M-My bad…"

It was safe to say that things between them, after that point, had become even aggressively more awkward.

Kyouka was never one to let a past slip up get the best of her when they were more important things to think about. Whenever she did something that one might consider 'embarrassing' and/or 'cringe-worthy', she had always been quick to shake off any and all negative emotion and go on with the task presented to her. Thankfully, it seemed that Midoriya Izuku was the same way.

The moment that their names were called over the PA, the boy who had been a nervous wreck before suddenly disappeared after he realized that it was their turn and slapped himself in the face. After that, he was nothing short of focused and confident.

No longer did Midoriya mutter and stutter his way through things when he addressed the instrument loving girl. It was almost as if Kyouka was dealing with an entirely different person and she couldn't help but wonder where it had all come from. Not that she was complaining, of course. It had made the whole rescue exercise incredibly easier for her, after all.

The moment the All Might fanatic saw what sort of disaster area that they were given, the Landslide Zone, he almost immediately came up with an idea as to how to most efficiently save the person caught up in the landslide, an idea that involved her using her ear jacks to listen for movement under the rubble while he carried her around piggyback style towards where noise was coming from, and when they eventually came upon someone, they would work together in breaking the person out as their respective quirks gave them the ability to move large pockets of dirt all at once.

So, that's how Kyouka found herself in her current situation with the green-haired boy squatting down in front of her with his arms ready to hook under her legs, his body already crackling with the strange energy that told all that his quirk was active.

Not being someone who really cared about someone of the other sex getting too close to her, Kyouka immediately got herself into a position when Midoriya did and pressed herself up against his back, hands finding their way to his shoulders, which, she had to admit, were much broader and firmer than she would've thought for such a plain looking guy.

Then again, it does make sense that he's so muscular, Kyouka thought to herself, her grip instinctively tightening when Midoriya hooked his arms right under her knees and stood up from his squatting position. His quirk is strength enhancement, after all. It would be pretty weird for someone with a quirk like that to not be at all muscular.

"A-Ah, a-a-are you alright, Jirou-san?" Suddenly, Midoriya's voice invaded her head, which ripped her clean from the thoughts that were running wild inside it and upon returning to reality, she found the boy she was being carried by was looking at her with a concerned look.

Blinking at the look Midoriya was giving her, Kyouka simply asked the question that was running through her mind, "Wait, what was that? I was off in my own thought there for a second."

"U-Um, I was asking you if you were alright," the All Might fanatic explained hurriedly as he continued to look at her worriedly. "I felt your grip on my shoulders tighten, so I thought that I might've—"

"—You didn't do anything, Midoriya." Not wanting to hear said boy fuss over her like he was her father, Kyouka quickly cut him off with words to assuage his worries. "I just needed to get a better grip, is all."

Kyouka had thought she had avoided being fussed over by Midoriya, but then suddenly, a verbal tidal wave of fuss suddenly began to spew from the boy's mouth, very much resembling a fire hydrant that's been cracked open.

"A-Ah, alright! M-My bad! I just didn't know if you were really comfortable doing something like this with a guy you barely know. I mean, I did sort of force the idea onto you all of a sudden, so—"

"—Seriously, it's alright. If I weren't comfortable with doing something like this, I wouldn't have agreed to it in the first place."

"O-Oh, okay…! J-Just tell me if you do, alright?"

"Hey, like I said, if I'm not comfortable with doing something, I'll be the first to tell you. Now, we should probably get going. The exercise just started."

Midoriya blanched snow white when Kyouka said that, which almost made the latter break out laughing at the face he was making, but she was unable to because, not a second later, the prior had suddenly launched himself into the air towards the landslide zone. Truth be told, though, that really only made her want to laugh even more.

Another thing that Kyouka learned about Midoriya that day was that the talk about him having a great mind for hero work was not exaggerated in the slightest. The boy was like a machine, moving from one possible location where survivors might be to another like it was second instinct if she didn't hear anything under the rubble.

If Kyouka thought about it though, that probably shouldn't have surprised her as much as it did as she's already seen him act in such a fashion during the provisional license exam, but getting to experience it one-on-one, with nothing else to focus on while he hopped around the Landslide Zone like a flea on a sugar rush, it was really a sight to see.

"Alright, let's try here next, Jirou-san!" Midoriya spoke up suddenly as his aforementioned hopping came to an equally as sudden and dead stop, having done so next to one of the many simulation skyscrapers that were near completely buried under rubble. The only part of the never really towering, concrete grey building being its top half, which was not free from damage either as a lot of its exterior had been chipped off by debris. The thing was clearly in bad shape, and that wasn't even mentioning all the windows, which had been all 'blown out' by the event that caused the 'landslide'.

"On it," Kyouka, not being one who needed to be told twice, quickly extended her ear jacks out towards the wall of the skyscraper and plugged them in, listening intently for a sign that might indicate there being survivors trapped inside.

If Kyouka had to describe what listening through solid walls felt like to someone, she would have to describe it like trying to listen in on a conversation two people were having in the next room by pressing your ear up against the wall. The only difference was that it only really started to sound like that when she was listening through thicker walls. After having done a bit of testing to see how far her quirk could pick up noise from, she found that there needed to be a good several meters between her and what she was trying to listen to for her to hear nothing, which made her really adept at rescue missions.

"Hey, Midoriya, I think I can hear something coming from inside," Kyouka eventually told her already named partner after listening in for a good ten seconds or so. "I'm more than pretty sure it's somebody breathing, though it's really muffled." Taking one more second to listen to the sound to make sure, she added on the thought that immediately ran through her mind upon noticing the breathing, "They're either deep in the building or under a lot of rubble."

"Wow… Your quirk can tell you that much, Jirou-san?" Midoriya asked the ear-jack heroine astonishedly as he looked back over his shoulder at her. "That's pretty amazing."

"You don't think I already know that, Midoriya?" Kyouka shot back jokingly, a small, amused smile growing on her lips as she spoke. The catalyst of which being the starry-eyed look the person carrying her around was giving her. "Now, quit it with the admiration." She lifted her ear jacks to point towards a nearby hole in the building, which clearly was just a smashed out window. "We sort of have a job to do?"

"A-Ah! Right!" Midoriya stuttered back in reply as he quickly activated his quirk and crouched down. Saying just one final thing before he lifted off, "M-My bad!"

Is this the place, Jirou-san?" Midoriya asked Kyouka as he planted his metal soles into the ground and forced himself to a dead stop, deactivating his quirk as he did so, which was something the ear jack heroine wished he didn't do as the momentum caused her to rock forwards. She really didn't mind it considering she'd been thrashed worse, but still, she'd rather it not happen too often in the first place.

"H-Hey, careful!" Kyouka yelled at the boy carrying her as she instinctively tightened the grip she had on him by wrapping her arms around his upper body. "I'm still up here, y'know?!"

"A-Ah! S-S-Sorry!" As always Midoriya did, he immediately apologized for his mistake. Well, at the very least, it was somewhat warranted this time. "I d-didn't mean to—"

"—Yeah, yeah, I know," Kyouka, knowing what was coming, quickly cut the green-haired boy before he could finish his millionth apology, making sure to keep the irritation in her voice to a minimum for his sake. "Just watch it next time, alright?"

"A-Alright!" Midoriya shrieked back in reply shrilly, his entire body growing stiff as a board as he spoke.

Letting out a tired sigh, the girl being literally piggybacked decided that it was best to not question her partner's eccentricities and just reel the topic of conversation back to one that would get his focus back.

Kyouka, trying to figure out what that topic would be, began to turn her head to look at the room around her. The first thing she noticed was that she and Midoriya were clearly standing in the middle of a thrashed office space. Desks, cubicles, and other random office equipment were thrashed all over the place like a tornado had gone through the place. A lot of which were piled up against the large pile of rubble that existed at the bottom of the slopes floor that the landslide had caused.

Right, he did ask me if this was the place before he clammed up, Kyouka thought to herself as she extended her ear jacks down towards the ground and stabbed their tips into it, listening yet again for the breathing. Where… Ah, there it is!

Looking out towards her left, the ear jack heroine's eyes focused right on a door that was caught right in the middle of being in free, open space and being buried under the landslide dirt that had gotten into the building.

"Midoriya, that door over there," Kyouka began whilst pointing over towards it, prompting the flustered boy to immediately perk up with the same focus that he had during the test of their exercise. "I think someone may be trapped in there."

"Ah, good!" Midoriya cheered, a smile growing on his lips, which almost immediately disappeared when a serious, contemplative took its place. "Now, how do we get in there without harming the civilian inside…?"

"Good question…" Kyouka agreed, mainly because she thought it was, in fact, a good question to be asking. Just how were they going to get a civilian out of there when their only way inside was being blocked by rubble? Smashing right through the wall would only put the person in danger of getting hit with shrapnel. "If only we could move that dirt out of the way fast enough—"

"—Ah, I got it!" Midoriya, for the first time ever, actually cut her off. "Jirou-san, you broke apart the ground back at the provisional license exams with the amps on your wrists, right?"

Kyouka blinked at the question at first, before then widening in realization at what Midoriya was suggesting. A small smile crept onto her face as she replied, "Alright Midoriya, put me down." Habitually, she quickly folded all of her fingers over one another and cracked them all at once, "Let's do it."

Alright, Jirou-san…" Midoriya began from somewhere behind Kyouka as she got herself into position in front of the rubble, standing only a meter away from the door that they needed to get through to save whoever was trapped inside. "On three… Alright?"

Kyouka simply hummed back in reply as she held her arms out to her sides in preparation, eyes firmly planted on the huge dirt obstacle standing in between her and saving the civilian stuck inside the room to her left.

"One…" The sound-quirk user could hear her partner beginning to charge his quirk up behind her, which prompted her to extend her ear jacks out to her sides as well. "Two…" When the All Might fanboy reached that number, she quickly plugged her jacks into her amps and pressed the amps' black parts onto the rubble. "Three!"

With that, Kyouka forced a boosted heartbeat through her amps into the packed dirt in front of her, causing it to shake violently as the sound waves roared through it and separated the small, individual dirt particles from one another.

Seeing that her actions had caused the result that they were looking for, Kyouka immediately jumped back and made enough room for Midoriya to jump through, which he did not an instant later, body spinning through the air as he reared his left leg up for a kick.

Metal insole making contact with the loosened dirt blocking the door, a large crater was quickly made in the soil as it was simply kicked away as if it was sand on the beach.

When that had happened, Kyouka didn't hesitate in dashing towards the now free door, turning the doorknob as it got in reach, and bursting inside. Her eyes immediately scanned for the civilian that had been stuck inside upon entry, eventually locating the 'person' who had gotten stuck inside almost immediately – the 'civilian' this time being represented by a practice dummy as Ectoplasm just so happened to be busy today – she rushed over, picked the dummy in her arms bridal-style, and then quickly rushed over to the corner farthest away from the part of the room, the side that hadn't been buried under the rubble, making sure use her back to shield the dummy from what was to come.

Then, a second later…

SMASH!

Just like the two of them planned, Midoriya came bursting through the wall with a figurative ton of shrapnel coming along for the ride.

"Jirou-san!" The green-haired boy called out to her as he landed, his tone of voice alone telling her that he should hurry. "We need to—!"

Not needing to be told twice, the sound-based heroine quickly began rushing out of the room with the dummy in hand, which was beginning to crumble now that the wall, it apparently being one of the main supports for the building itself, had been taken away in such a destructive way.

As she ran, Kyouka couldn't help but notice that Midoriya had decided to stay and wait for her to get out of the room before he did himself – probably to make sure that she made it out with no trouble – which would have been a nice sentiment if not for the fact that doing so made him completely unaware of the piece of concrete that had chipped off the ceiling above him and was heading right for the back of his head.

"Watch out!" Kyouka called out to the boy, the world moving in slow motion as she extended her ear jacks out to stop the falling object.

Midoriya, very obviously hearing her, blinked and quickly turned around and immediately caught sight of the thing that had caused the young heroine to call out in the first place.

Not wanting to risk her partner getting injured, Kyouka, as fast as she could, whipped the tips of her ear jacks out towards the looming rock.

SMASH!

The whole precarious scenario ended with a loud explosion, one that was created by metal colliding with rock, breaking the once dangerous falling object apart into dust.

"A-Ah, thank you—!" Midoriya began as he shielded himself from the dust with his arms, but Kyouka cut her off before she could finish.

"—Thank me when we get out of here!" Kyouka exclaimed, her voice panicked as she ran past him and out the room.

"Ah, r-right!" Midoriya exclaimed from behind her in response.

Not a second later, Kyouka found a pair of strong arms wrap around her chest and lift her up off the ground by her arms before, all of a sudden, the world began to start moving much faster than usual.

Looking down towards the arms in question and then following them all the way up to their owner, the heroine found that Midoriya had activated his quirk and decided that the fastest way for them to get out of the building was for him to pick up and literally carry her out.

"Sorry about doing this all of a sudden, Jirou-san, but this was the only thing I could of doing—!"

"—I-It's alright! Just get us out of here!" Kyouka told Midoriya as she tried to ignore where exactly his hands were placed.

"G-Gotcha!" With that, Midoriya began running straight at a nearby wall.

…

SMASH!

In the end, the two of them just barely managed to pass the exercise with a score of seventy points. The main reasoning for the grade being, according to Aizawa-sensei, that the destruction they generated could've caused the building to collapse in on itself, causing more loss of life if there were more than one person inside in a real-life scenario. Thankfully, they had managed to complete the objective presented to them, in the allotted time, so they were able to pass despite the very valid criticism, which was something that she couldn't say about all of her classmates.

Kyouka couldn't help but feel relieved as she quickly got herself changed out of her hero costume and back into her school uniform. She and her partner had just come ten points away from failing and, while passing with the highest points possible wasn't a big priority for her, she didn't like cutting it so close. Improvements were going to have to be made for the next time, though, in the end, she had no idea as to what those actually would be.

"Ugh! You were so lucky that you got Midoriya as a partner!" Tooru, the invisible heroine, groaned as she stomped her foot on the ground out of what was very obviously frustration. Her blazer remaining unbuttoned as she had, for some reason, decided to wait until she was just about done with changing back into her uniform to start talking. "All Bakugou did was call me a 'useless invisi-bitch' while running around like he was some sort of bull!"

"I mean, at least he didn't start blasting around willy-nilly looking for the dummy, right?" Mina suddenly chimed in, prompting the two conversing girls to look over towards where the voice had come from, where they found the pink-skinned girl walking over towards them. "That managed to save you some points, right?"

"Isn't that sort of just common sense, though?" Kyouka asked the acid quirk user, smiling at her friend as she in greeting as she did so. "I mean, the two of them were put in the Conflagration Zone, after all."

"I really wouldn't put it past him to do something like that usually, though," Tooru stated, voice deflated of its usual bounce as the entirety of her blazer suddenly began to dangle forwards. "So, I guess you're right, Mina…"

"Mhm!" The horned-girl being praised hummed back in reply with her chest puffing out, very clearly stating to the two other girls that she was proud of herself. "As usual!"

"I think Aizawa-sensei would probably have something to say about that," Kyouka joked whilst smiling at her pink-skinned classmate, who almost immediately flinched back, acting as if the ear jack heroine had thrown a punch.

"I-I have no idea what you're talking about!" Mina yelled loudly as she held both her hands behind her head. "I'm sure that Aizawa-sensei has nothing but good things to say about me!"

Kyouka felt the smile on her face immediately drop when she heard that and, given that Tooru had stopped any and all movement, something that was completely out of her nature, the noise-based heroine assumed that she was doing the same.

"W-What? W-Why are you looking at me like that?! Stop—!"

As Mina tried to deny what the two of them were implying with their stunned silence, an all too familiar vibrating caught her attention and dragged it away from the conversation.

Glancing over towards her locker, where the vibrating had come from to begin with, Kyouka leaned towards it, reached her hand inside her bag, and reached around its contents for the offending object, pulling it out when her palm found it.

"Ah, you get a text or something, Jirou-san?" Tooru asked, her tone as curious as a starved, stray cat poking around a fishy-smelling tin can.

"Um, yeah…" Kyouka replied as she glanced over towards the invisible girl, before then looking back towards her phone. "Though, I don't know who'd be texting me right now—"

Kyouka felt her entire body freeze up upon reading who had sent the text and what it contained.

Knowing who exactly were hovering over her shoulders as of the moment, the young heroine very quickly shoved her phone back into her bag and came up with a plausible explanation for the text, "Ah, it was just my mom asking if I could stop by the store and pick up some extra strings for her bass."

"Oh, so your mom plays bass, Kyouka?" Mina asked almost immediately, which told the girl in question that her deception had worked out as planned.

"Mhm," Kyouka hummed back in reply, nodding her head as she did so. "She's actually the one who taught me how to play…"

As she lied through her teeth to her friends, the sound-based heroine couldn't help but wonder in the what the world the sender of the text was thinking.

From Midoriya Izuku,

Thank you for saving me earlier, Jirou-san! Sorry to disturb you while you're probably getting dressed, but I wanted to know if you were free this weekend. I wanted to pay you back for saving me back there during the exercise. I know that you probably don't think too much of it, but I really do appreciate it! So, if it's alright with you, I'd like to get you lunch. It's only if you want, of course! No pressure!

As Kyouka stared at the text sent to her by Midoriya once more – this time doing so through the gaps of her bangs as her hair always feel in front of her eyes whenever she'd lie on her side – she tightened the grip she had on the pillow that was already in her arms and wondered just how many attempts it took the green-haired boy to write the message without sounding like the stuttering mess that he was.

Letting out an exasperated sigh, the dark-haired girl began moving her thumb over the screen of her phone.

…

Chapter End.